A short note on why we get science wrong

 

Someone on Twitter this week (let's call her Georgie, not her real name) helped me understand why many of us misunderstand science. More particularly, why conservatives, who know what they know and don't like to be told anything different, often distrust science - among them anti-vaxxers and folk who know Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon but was filmed on a backlot in California like Casablanca.

How Georgie and I started on this doesn't matter. It's just that at one point in our little exchange Georgie remarked that "reason" told us Earth is round. 

I couldn't agree with that and pointed out that people who think Earth is flat also have "reasons". Reasons - our reason and reasoning, rationalism and "common sense" - all support things that are incorrect as well as things that are correct, support sense and nonsense alike.

Georgie agreed with that and suggested we should speak of "logic" instead. I felt bad about it, but again I had to disagree. Logic doesn't tell us Earth is round but quite the opposite: logic definitely makes Earth flat because you can walk over it on the level in a straight line. You see the problem?

Actually, the problem is straightforward. The problem is that we think of "science" and "reason" as the same thing when they are not; and we think of both as "logical" when they aren't necessarily. Forget the illogical Cheshire Cat whose grin survives its disappearance: today it's Schrodinger's Cat, alive and dead at the same time.

So many of our mysteries, not to mention our disagreements, are the result of the way we use words, and Georgie helped me find the right words this time. I know because she didn't answer when I wrote:

Science told us Earth is round. Until it did, it was anyone's guess.

What's it like getting older?

It's a question we all face, you'd think inappropriately, from when we are young. 

Most of us seem to agree that, provided your health holds up, you never feel any older; and that time goes more quickly the older you get. They're the common experiences, although I remember my friend Dave saying, 'We're over the hill', and citing as proof - when I denied it - 'Look how quickly it's gone.' We were 27 at the time.

There's another oddity, not so often mentioned. Everything gets younger the older you get. Not just the policemen, as the saying goes: the whole world. Things you once thought of as long ago, as Olden Times - your mum and dad's lives before you came along, the Swinging Sixties or Roaring Twenties, World War, Will Shakespeare and the rest - aren't far-off at all: the past is not another country, but your own. Except for your family childhood, that is. That seems to belong to another life altogether.

Is it just that we know more? Have we simply grown wiser?

We'll all speak for ourselves on that. I personally know a great deal more because I've read more books, seen more plays and movies, gone to lots of places and talked and listened to a lot more people than when I was 15. Obvious enough. 

Does that mean I'm wiser? My youngest daughter sort of asked me that when she was over on a visit this year. It went something like, 'You must know what life's about because you've been around for yonks.'

Swallowing a teaspoonful of resentment at this impudence, I answered promptly, 'Yes, I can definitely tell you everything you need to know about life,' which at least made us both laugh and me think about it afterwards a little more seriously.

No, I don't believe you get wiser, but you do get to know yourself better as long as you care to give it some thought. One view is that we don't exist as a continuous person psychologically throughout life. That is the accepted idea - that we're the same person growing all the time. But that's also believed to be an illusion, created by our memory.

I'm not sure it's an illusion. My review of me seems to show all the seeds are there when you're younger, and of course you don't spot them then because you're not looking for them then. 

Later in life, Jonathan Swift evidently took to saying, 'I am what I am.' It's a long term assignment, to Know Thyself.

In an article or a comment on the internet last week (can't remember which), some rather unfortunate person lamented, 'What's the point of life if you die and everything's lost and that's the end of it?'

Which is no doubt the difference between getting older and being old.